Day: September 4, 2017

How powerful would Hurricane Harvey have been in 1880? How much stronger might it be in 2100?

❝ A single Hurricane Harvey has been more than anyone can bear. But to better prepare cities for future storms, researchers are preparing to re-watch Harvey thousands of times. They’ve already been studying earlier storms, and their conclusions don’t bode well for the decades to come.

❝ In the months and years after Superstorm Sandy’s 2012 assault on New Jersey and New York, Gary Lackmann, an atmospheric science professor at North Carolina State University, was asked how the event might be understood in light of human-driven global warming. He knew that the question everyone wants answered—did climate change cause the storm—wasn’t the right one. Hurricanes were around long before the industrial revolution. Two questions did, however, resonate:

What would the weather pattern that sustained Sandy have spawned in a cooler past or a hotter future?…

RTFA for conclusions.

The body of Lackmann’s study ran before Hurricane Harvey. He’s adding that info to an ongoing evaluation. The more empirical data you have, the better. Especially in the political climate of crap “alternative facts” so loved by today’s conservatives.